“Now, coming to the London issue,” she started. “You cannot be serious about dropping all your responsibilities here and coming with me.”
Karan shook his head once, already done with the discussion. In his head, he was already in London, living with his wife. Hence, his expression made it clear that he was not in the mood to debate something he had already decided.
“I amcoming with you,” he said firmly. “Even if you want to keep a distance between us, do it. But we do that living together. In the same house. Around each other. Because that is the only way I can survive now. I am done living without you, Mishti.”
Mishti opened her mouth, searching for a comeback, but none came. All she could manage was a soft scoff instead. “This is exactly what I was talking about,” she muttered. “Swatting you for your tantrums and demands.”
Karan grinned at that. His eyes flicked around the room briefly before returning to her face. “I am waiting.”
It took her a second to understand.
And then she did.
Her cheeks burned instantly, turning a deep shade of red as she realised exactly what he meant. Mortified, she pushed at his chest again, this time with more force, blurting out the first thing that came to her mind just to hide her shyness.
“You are impossible,” she snapped, before turning on her heel and walking straight into the kitchen.
Karan stayed where he was. He did not follow her.
His expression sobered as the moment settled, because now other things had to be addressed. Knowing that Dilip Goel had hired someone to shoot him was not something he was going to sit quietly with. He would not allow a threat like this to exist again. Not for himself. Not for anyone in the family.
He pulled out his phone and walked away, already dialling numbers, planning his next actions.
From the kitchen doorway, Mishti turned back and saw him engaged in a call. The smile that had lingered on her face moments ago was slowly replaced by a heavy seriousness.
No matter how much Karan had told her not to feel guilty, she could not simply let this go.
All this time, she had only heard about the sins her father had committed against Karan and his family. But this time, hehad crossed a line that could not be ignored. He had tried to kill Karan.
That was unforgivable.
She knew what she had to do. But she also knew that Karan would never allow her to get involved directly if he sensed what she was thinking. Which meant she needed help. Someone who would listen and understand the gravity of it without stopping her and help her do this.
And she knew exactly who that was.
Rajat.
CHAPTER 47
Wadhwa Mansion
Over the next week, Karan Wadhwa was anything but calm. From the outside, it looked like he was just resting, taking medication and working on his recovery. But Mishti had seen him buried in work, being busy with calls, files, and conversations that always stopped the moment she entered the room. He never lied to her. He simply chose to hide his actions. Because this was not something he would ever burden her with.
The first call he made was to his legal team, not with questions or help in finding solutions, but with direct instructions. He wanted to know every financial trail connected to Dilip Goel. If, despite being in prison, he was still having connections to work on his orders, he needed to know how he was paying them. No one would do such tasks for free, and how could a man like Dilip Goel manage that kind of sum from inside the prison? If money had moved, Karan wanted to know where, when, and through whom.
By the end of the second day, a forensic audit by his legal team had already been initiated.
The second call went to someone far more powerful in the judiciary system…a man who did not need introductions, only context. Karan gave him that, stripped of emotion. He presented all the proofs on the shootout that happened - the confession of the undertrial shooter, details of Dilip Goel, a life-term convictoperating through outside channels and how a civilian family like‘Wadhwas’was put at risk.
That was all it took.
By the evening of the third day, Dilip Goel’s prison privileges were under review. His visitor list flagged. His calls were marked for monitoring. A recommendation for stricter isolation moved up the chain, carrying enough weight because of who had requested it and why.
Karan then worked on Dilip Goel’s outside network dismantling. The shooter was not the problem. The problem was the middleman who had connected him to Dilip Goel. That thread, once pulled, unravelled faster than expected. An old contact of Dilip surfaced, who was a big name, an ex-politician, but still loyal to Dilip only because he had some secret information about him, which he used to get his outside jobs, like threatening the Wadhwa family, done. This middleman had no other way but to abide by it, only to hide his past crimes.
Once those secrets of that ex-politician, which Dilip was hiding, were traced, Karan let the law do what it did best.
Arrests followed. Interrogations began. One by one, the doors Dilip had once opened so easily began to shut, this timepermanently.
